Top tips for boosting training results with video

It was John Cleese who famously said, “People learn nothing when they’re asleep and very little when they’re bored”.

While this is a good mantra for any training professional, keeping your employee training fresh and upbeat can sometimes seem like an uphill task. If your firm’s approach to training is stuck in a rut, here are some tips on how to boost learning results with a well thought-out video strategy.

Set up a ‘TrainingTube’

Think of a TrainingTube as a video-centric portal for training that lets users securely create, upload, share, search, browse, and watch live and on-demand training videos on any device. All training content is held in a central rich media repository for easy search and discovery. This may include: video recordings of training sessions, audio files, PowerPoint slides, and e-books.

This approach makes it much easier to train large numbers of employees fast, and to keep your training materials in order. It also helps to reduce classroom, travel and third-party trainer costs.

Run interactive, live training webinars and record them for on-demand playback

You can stream live video training presentations to employees with a single click by using a webcasting tool. Choose a tool that incorporates Q&A capabilities and allows the trainer to conduct ad hoc interactive polls – this is good for retaining engagement levels throughout the training session.

Afterwards, the recorded session is automatically added to the on-demand video library on your TrainingTube, which makes it easy for other employees to watch the session at a later date. Added functionality such as chaptering and in-video search helps to extend the usefulness of these videos.

Make it easy to create compelling video-based training materials

Help instructors to easily create, capture, edit and publish training videos from wherever they are – not just in the office. The latest content creation and authoring tools help to simplify the production of compelling, interactive training presentations.

Share training materials via social business applications

Consider integrating your TrainingTube with your LMS (e.g. Moodle, Blackboard) or connecting it to your social business applications (e.g. Jive, SharePoint, IBM Connections). You can then publish training videos and video assignments to the relevant course modules on the LMS, or to relevant social business group spaces, with a view to broadening the reach of these materials.

Encourage employees to share their knowledge in a video

It’s likely that a considerable number of your employees hold a rich mine of work-related information in their heads that would be valuable for colleagues to hear about. Video is the perfect medium for employees to share this type of knowledge with others.

Encourage them to use webcam recording to film their own how-to videos, expert advice videos, or show off their top tips for sales success, which can be easily uploaded for publishing on the TrainingTube.

This approach not only delivers a wealth of useful, re-usable resources, but also frees up time for the corporate training department to focus on the core training curriculum.

Offer video training on the go

Now that we all have a smartphone in our pocket, it makes strong business sense to let employees learn when it suits them – not just in the office. For field-based employees, they can learn about a new product by watching a training video on their smartphone or tablet in between customer meetings, or on their commute to and from work.

To make ‘on the go’ training work, choose a video portal that works on iOS and Android devices and enables playback of videos offline, automatic device detection, and automatic adjustment of the layout to fit any screen/device.

Make video search a priority

Sophisticated video search capabilities are essential. Look for a video portal that lets users not only search for keywords within the title and description, but also to skip to the exact point within the video or corresponding slide where the keyword is mentioned.

Make use of analytics to refine your video-based training

Tracking and evaluating employees’ behaviour when participating in and watching video-based training sessions helps you to understand what works and what doesn’t. Choose a system that incorporates built-in analytics and lets you see who watched what, when, for how long, and on what device.

In-video quizzes also provide useful information on how different sections of the training course are being received. User- and content-specific indicators help you to track and improve training programmes, measure ROI, and verify completion of courses for compliance purposes.

In summary, a comprehensive video strategy for training can help organisations to make courses more accessible. Plus materials can be improved and refined based on user and content analytics. This approach will elicit better learning outcomes from employees - and stamp out once and for all the prospect of employees being bored during a training course!

You can now add videos to your forum posts and comments. To use this new feature, take the embed code from a website such as YouTube or Vimeo, click on the Embed Media button in the TJ text editor toolbar and paste your embed code into the pop-up window, then click OK. You can type your comments above or below the video, which will be displayed once you save the post.